57 W Street NW

About the neighborhood

Bloomingdale is a neighborhood in the Northwest quadrant of Washington, D.C., less than two miles north of the United States Capitol building. It is a primarily residential neighborhood, with a small commercial center near the intersection of Rhode Island Avenue and First Street NW featuring bars, restaurants, and food markets. Most of Bloomingdale’s houses are Victorian-style rowhouses built around 1900 as single-family homes. Today, they remain primarily single-family residences, with some recently converted to two-unit condominiums. Bloomingdale is bounded to the north by Channing Street NW, to the east by North Capitol Street, to the south by Florida Avenue NW, and to the west by Second Street NW.

The neighborhoods bordering Bloomingdale are LeDroit Park to the west, Shaw to the southwest, Truxton Circle to the south, Eckington to the east, and Stronghold to the northeast. To the north, sitS the McMillan Sand Filtration Site and the McMillan Reservoir. The present-day neighborhood of Bloomingdale originated from several large estates. Located just outside the original boundary of the City of Washington as designed by Pierre L’Enfant in 1792 and in the former County of Washington, the neighborhood known today as Bloomingdale began to develop its residential character in the late 1880s, shortly after the County of Washington was absorbed by the City of Washington and just over a century after L’Enfant’s plan was developed. Bloomingdale has its own community-managed and community-owned greenspace, Crispus Attucks Park. The acre-and-a-quarter park, in the court bounded by First, U, V, and North Capitol streets NW, was previously the site of a warehouse built in 1910 and used as an telephone-switching station and cable yard for the Chesapeake & Potomac Telephone Company.

The park is named after Crispus Attucks, an African American who was killed in the Boston Massacre and is often regarded as the first person killed in the American Revolution. Crispus Attucks Park is privately owned and open to the public. It is maintained through charitable donations and volunteer labor coordinated by the Crispus Attucks Development Corporation.